Spent a fortune on Alton Towers and nearly everything was closed

Another warning: if you buy the tickets through Tesco rewards, they up the prices quite a bit so it may not be worth it.

Normal price for the day we’re going was £38pp, but via the Merlin/Tesco link was £49!!

I hve to agree that Merlin parks are a disorganised shitshow in general. But the one time i did complain while at Thorpe Park after 2 rides broke down after i had queued for them for ages, they did give us some free fasttrack tickets.

I remember this happening to us at Drayton Manor.

I agree that in the Easter school holidays, most attractions should be open. It would be busy enough. Went to a retail park this morning and yes it's the holidays but I couldn't believe how busy it was, worst than a Saturday afternoon.

I would initially say YABU but you’ve hardly listed any actual rides.

Yes it’s sad that mine train and oblivion are closed. I love those rides. Other theme parks also don’t open water rides all year round for obvious reasons.

Can you list what you wanted to go on that was closed?

We had a similar day. It's driving distance for us so I can't comment on the hotel situation but we had bog standard tickets. Spent hours queuing for things to be closed before we got on them. One of the other parents went to customer services (ironically I think she had a fair old queue there).

She was offered replacement tickets and pushed them saying it wasn't good enough so we were all offered silver fast pass tickets. We went back and had a great day.

Why are you telling the OP to commit fraud

the right course of action is to complain to the park.

But they provided a service, the OP still went to the park, the complaint is it was expensive given things were closed. I bet the t&c’s will say something like not all rides will be open every day due to weather/maintenance etc so no refund would be due.

I believe banks are starting to clamp down on this now. Claiming back via your card is supposed to be when its not possible to from the provider not for every transaction you decide is not worth the money

Why??

We are avoidning AT after the RAP issues.

We tend to go to Drayton Manor instead. They opened this week and not all of the rides were open when we went this weekend, but they had the common decency to only charge half price.

Frankly, if this is how they treat people who save up to go, then they are going to deserve what happens when Universal opens.

I would complain to Alton Towers & Merlin. Likely they will give you passes to go to any Merlin park on another day. This happened to us when they closed a couple of rides while we were at Chessington.

ffs is there anything in this country that isn’t monumentally shite right now?

Oblivion has been open this week.

Oblivion was only closed briefly. It's running again now.

👏👏👏

Explain your comment.

Unfortunately I think Brits really are accepting of throwing their money away - pretty much everything in this country is broken, rundown, subpar and expensive, yet we all carry on forking out and meekly accepting it.

OP if it wasn’t stated on the website I would complain. Alton Towers isn’t what it used to be these days.

When we went to Drusillas and some parts were shut down they gave us a pass with money off to return again. Unfortunately was only valid for a few months which we didn't realise and had run out by the time we wanted to go again. Over Easter they are letting children in for £1 but the adults pay full price

Knockhatch doesn't always have everything open but they reduce the price by a little bit on these days. Saw some baby meerkats last week and the news has said some capybara have just arrived. I now have an annual pass for here

That's only a handful. AT is huge. Most rides are showing as open on my app.

All ride availability is clearly stated on their website.

I put yanbu but should've put yabu.

Like many others have said there are much more than a handful of rides open.

I took my DD there a couple of weeks ago in term time and we had a fantastic day, as others have said you can't count the monorail or cable cars, River Rapids and Battle Galleons are crap anyway so there's only the mine train that you miss out on.
All the decent rides are open and more than enough to fill a day.

It doesn't look like many rides were closed? All the big ones bar Oblivion were open and no one expects water rides to be open this early in the year.

I would ask for a refund and point their lack of information about rides being shut.

Thank you so much having been trying to decide between Alton towers and Blackpool for a couple of days.

I was there yesterday with my kid and almost everything was open. There is a ride availability section on their website and it clearly stated which rides would be closed. Two of the stated closures aren't actually rides, they are transport to get to and around the park. Two are water rides that are opening in May when the weather is warmer. Runaway mine train was closed for maintenance and Oblivion was actually open even though it's stated as closed on their website. So that's 3 rides that were closed.
Thirteen and Spinball opened late due to technical problems but they both still opened during the day. A couple of rides went down during the day but opened again. There are rides that open at 11am, an hour after the rest of the rides which is all stated on their app.
I'm not surprised you didn't get a refund, there were plenty of rides to go on even though it was a busy day, we had a great time yesterday.

The one that's never let me down is Paulton's Park (but I still wouldn't go in the Easter holidays). We usually take DS on a Sunday before an INSET day and stay overnight.